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SCP-1867
SCP-1867, formerly known as Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood, is a British explorer and naturalist who was heavily active during the 19th Century. At some point shortly after the turn of the 20th Century, Blackwood was changed from a human into a member of the ''Nembrotha kubaryana'' species of sea slug. Description As a human, Blackwood appeared no older than forty to the entity known as Mr. Deeds in 1837, but equally appeared of a similar age just after the turn of the 20th Century.Recollections of a Gentleman's Gentleman As a member of ''Nembrotha kubaryana'', SCP-1867 is physically un-anomalous, measuring 11.7 cm (4.6 inches) in length with black skin, green stripes and an orange foot and antenna. He possesses the ability to communicate telepathically with anyone within five meters. The style of SCP-1867's speech and the terminology he uses remains appropriate to the late 19th Century even decades later in the 20th Century while he is in Foundation captivity. He is generally friendly and cooperative with Foundation researchers, but refuses to acknowledge that he is a sea slug, sending those who asked him about it away. History According to his own claims, Lord Theodore Thomas Blackwood was raised in the West Counties of England and attended Eton College. He remembered his boyhood home as a cold and dreary place, even in summer, that was surrounded by woods.From the Diaries of Lord Blackwood He inherited the title of viscount from his family. As a young man he would often enjoy riding out with his hounds on fox hunts. At some point, one of Blackwood's cousins was turned into an eel by a cursed object.Lord Blackwood and the Thaumaturge In 1833, Blackwood led the Great Warlock Hunt in Austria. On June 28th, 1837, Blackwood hired the entity known as Mr. Deeds to act as his valet, managing his estate and various serving staff. Deed's would hold this position intermittently for the next six decades, finding other employers when Blackwood was out of the countries for periods of time, as his services were not required. In the 1840s, Blackwood encountered the frenchman Patrice de Mac-Mahon for the first time while in Algeria where Mac-Mahon was commanding the French Foreign Legion. In 1843, Blackwood traveled to the planet Mars with the astronomer Dr. Hightower.Lord Blackwood the Astro-Naut Blackwood versus the Thaumaturge During the Crimean War in July of the year 1855, Blackwood was in London meeting with a friend to discuss an expedition to the East Indies when he was visited by a messenger from Lord Palmerston, current Prime Minister of England. The explorer immediately made his way to Palmerston's office at 10 Downing Street, where the prime minister explained that his services were needed fighting against the Russians. Plans were being made with the French for an attack on the city of Sevastopol in August or September, as they had besieged it for close to a year; however, the Russian forces in the city included the powerful Thaumaturge Yuri Dreshnik and Palmerston was unwilling to let an attack go ahead while the Russians had Dreshnik's magic on their side. Agreeing to deal with Dreshnik, Blackwood boarded the [[HMS Gallant|HMS Gallant]] the next day and set sail for Istanbul. After repelling a pirate raid near the shores of Libya, the Gallant completed what was otherwise an uneventful trip and dropped Blackwood at Istanbul, where he swapped to a smaller vessel to finish his journey. He arrived aboard the command vessel of his old acquaintance General Patrice de Mac-Mahon on the last day of August and was informed that Dreshnik was hiding out in the Malakoff tower overlooking the port and preparing some kind of ritual. Blackwood then put together a team of the finest soldiers the allied armies had to offer and mounted a night raid on the Malakoff. Halfway to the port the team's boat sank, and before they could reach the tower their sniper slipped on wet stones and broke his ankle. Half the team were then gunned down after being discovered by the enemy, but those that remained managed to chase Dreshnik and corner him in his ritual room. Unwilling to surrender, Dreshnik pointed his command baton at Sargent Monroe, one of Blackwood's men, and killed him by turning his skin inside out. He then killed Corporal Turner in the same way before Blackwood shot the rod from his hand, blowing off several of the thaumaturge's fingers in the process. Dreshnik then howled and sprayed the blood form his fingers onto Monroe and Turner, who rose from the dead and attacked their former allies, killing Durand and Roux. Blackwood killed the pair before braining Dreshnik with his own command rod, leaving the thaumaturge's ritual incomplete. Blackwood burned down the ritual room before escaping, but kept the command rod as a souvenir, storing it at his cottage. Mac-Mahon's forces attacked Sevastopol a week later, and without support from Dreshnik the Russians were quickly defeated. Journey to the asteroid Victoria For a year Blackwood remained in London fulfilling his duty as a member of the House of Lords to help Palmerston's government bring the Crimean War to an end. On April 3rd, 1856, he returned to his London estate as the war was over and learned from Mr. Deeds that he had missed a visit from Dr. Hightower, who requested his presence in Greenwich on the 5th. Search for Big-Foot Blackwood claimed to have fought in the Second Opium War, which lasted from 1856 to 1860. On July 3rd, 1857 however, he landed in Seattle, Oregon in the United States of America, having left England over half a year earlier. He had traveled to America based on a rumor he had heard in a gentleman's club on Broad Street, London, which spoke of a mysterious race known as the sasquatch native to America. Blackwood hoped to capture, or if necessary kill, a sasquatch so that he could bring it back to England. After hiring porters, a white man and a Native American as guides, Blackwood set out for Mount Rainer, known at the time as Tahoma, where the native claimed he had once seen a sasquatch. Over the next four days the group made steady progress through the forests toward the mountain, and on July 7th Blackwood caught his first glimpse of Mt. Rainer. Soon after he came upon a young fox trapped by local native hunters and freed it out of pity. The following day, on July 8th, Blackwood and his group met with a native hunting party on the banks of the river Nisqually and after the explorer's native guide greeted the hunters' leader as his cousin the two groups shared a meal of salmon and traded goods, allowing Blackwood to learn a few words of their language and causing him to plan to someday return to the region to learn more about them. On the 11th of July, a tribe of Native Americans who worshipped the sasquatch ambushed Blackwood's retinue while he slept and killed all but the explorer, the Native American guide and a single porter. The survivors were knocked out and then tied to poles so that their captors could carry them through the woods. On the 13th, Blackwood managed to write a journal entry recounting the attack, as the tribe had not discovered his journal. The tribe reached their home camp in the foothills of Mt. Rainer on July 15th, and at midday escorted the prisoners to a snowy clearing. There, the porter was singled out and moved to the center of the clearing where he was attacked and killed and eaten by the sasquatch that the tribe worshipped. Blackwood and the guide were returned to their tents afterwards, but on the 17th they were once again taken to the clearing and the guide was offered up as a sacrifice to the sasquatch and killed as the porter had been before. On the 18th the tribe began preparing Blackwood to be sacrificed, and he spent the morning in solemn prayer and reflection upon his life. Once he was at the clearing however the ritual sacrifice was interrupted by the arrival of a large number of woodland animals led by the fox king Alaric the Fifth, whose relative Blackwood had earlier saved from the trap. The animals set upon the tribe and the sasquatch while Blackwood used the chaos to flee, traveling for ten miles by his estimation before having to settle down for the night due to exhaustion and injuries. Upon awaking the next day, Blackwood discovered himself surrounded by six deer and two racoons. He at first was shocked and made for his weapon, but stopped after seeing that the animals had brought him what remained of his possessions from his camp. The deer carrying the bundle shrugged it onto the ground, allowing the explorer to find within his rifle, his pistol, his tent, medicinal alcohol and enough dried rations to last two weeks. Alaric himself then stepped forward and barked for one of the racoons to deliver a missive to Blackwood that it carried upon its back. The message thanked the explorer for rescuing the cub and bestowed upon him the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the Thistle, asking that he spread word of their kingdom to the lands of Christendom and bring back ambassadors. After the fox king then crossed himself and Blackwood did the same, Alaric was satisfied that their exchange was complete and left. The explorer wandered through the woods for five days before chancing upon the friendly tribe of locals who he had earlier traded with. After trying to convey to them what had happened to him, Blackwood was escorted back to Seattle, where he rested and healed his wounds for a month. By September 7th he had learned it was too late in the year for another expedition to be sent into the woods, and sent a letter to San Francisco to be telegraphed to the Royal Society in London for funding to either relocate the sasquatch or set up an embassy with Alaric's kingdom. He did not expect to be granted anything as he assumed nobody would believe him, and began planning to set out in May 1858 to Boreno where the White Raja had acquired a machine that fell from the sky. In the Land of the Unclean In 1872, Blackwood rounded up a herd of rampaging bunyips. On December 23rd 1875, Blackwood attended a Christmas party at his regular gentleman's club where he learned from the evolutionist Alfred Russel Wallace that one of his associates had recently returned from the Levant with a small red disc capable of turning mirrors into a portal to another world. He was told that two months earlier a man calling himself Izikaiah Belson had fallen through a mirror effected by the disc, after which Belson had been committed to Bedlam Asylum. On Christmas day 1875, Blackwood ate an early meal with his staff and then gave them the rest of the day off, spending the evening contemplating and planning a new expedition to the land beyond the mirror. On January 3rd, 1876, the explorer traveled to Bedlam and met with Belson and found the man praying in his cell in a dialect of English the explorer barely understood. Once Blackwood recognised the prayer he joined Belson in English, causing the prisoner to declare that Blackwood was a sinner or a witch as he spoke "the speech of the old elders". Once Blackwood had reassured Belson that he was only a naturalist and not a sinner, the two spent several hours hashing out a form of pigdin English so Belson could describe his world to Blackwood. After Blackwood was eventually told he must leave for the night he convinced a nurse into letting him see Belson's file and discovered that the acquaintance of Wallaces whose home Belson had fallen into was named Weathers. Keen to explore this new world, Blackwood then traveled to Weathers's home and purchased the disc from him, discovering that it turned green whilst he was holding it. Placing the disc upon a mirror in his home, Blackwood discovered the portal now led to a farm land and observed the world through the mirror for several days. On several occasions the farmer and his workers came close enough to the mirror for the explorer to hear them speak, although again he had trouble understanding their dialect. After purchasing Belson's clothes from the Metropolitan Police with a sizable donation, Blackwood had Deeds tailor them to fit him so that he would not stand out after passing through the mirror. He then packed lightly to prepare and dressed himself in a farmer's outfit for the first leg of the journey, planning to change upon reaching a city. On the 10th of January, Blackwood entered the mirror at just passed midnight and once through judged himself to be in California based on the position of the stars. Drawn by loud noises he then approached a highway and discovered it brightly lit and busy with motor and hover vehicles. Blackwood was so overwhelmed with the advanced technology that for a while he simply sat by the road and tried to take in what he was seeing; however, eventually he began walking along the side of the road judging it was thirty miles to the nearest city and would take him till midday to reach it. Part way through his journey along the road, Blackwood was offered a lift by the passing motorist Ben O'Kazzem and accepted in order to see the inside of his vehicle. Within fifteen minutes the pair had reached the city while Blackwood gave a cover story to O'Kazzem that he was a farm hand looking to research his family history in one of the city's great libraries. He then attempted to pay the driver a gold slug for the trip, but O'Kazzem refused such a large amount, instead accepting a silver slug and giving Blackwood a handful of paper currency as change. After learning that the city was called the City of Angelic Glory, On the 18th of April, 1880, Blackwood penned a song entitled "I Am the Very Model" which inspired the similar work by playwright W.S Gilbert. On October 17th, 1882, Sullivan wrote to Blackwood and thanked him for his "lyrical tribute", inviting the explorer to attend a the premiere of the comical opera Iolanthe. Blackwood filed the original handwritten song and the letter from Gilbert together in his cottage. At some point following his transformation into a sea slug, Blackwood had Mr. Deeds add an additional verse onto the end of the song mentioning the explorer's current non-human status.I Am the Very Model The Great Tarasque Hunt Blackwood was involved in "some nastiness" in Patagonia in 1893, during which Mr. Deeds was led to believe he had perished. the servant however worked with Blackwood again for the last time following the turn of the century, although he maintained the belief that Blackwood had perished in 1893. Containment procedures SCP-1867 is kept in a 40x70x30 cm aquatic specimen tank with an environment and care identical to what would be required of a non-anomalous member of the Nembrotha kubaryana species. No additional security measures are seen as necessary, although permission from a member of staff with Level 2 clearance or higher is necessary for access to SCP-1867 or any of the material recovered from his home, which is now housed in Secure Storage Vault 16. Appearances *Lord Blackwood the Astro-Naut *From the Diaries of Lord Blackwood *Lord Blackwood in the Land of the Unclean *Lord Blackwood and the Great Tarasque Hunt of '83 *A Gentleman *Lord Blackwood and the Thaumaturge *Recollections of a Gentleman's Gentleman *I Am the Very Model Notes and references Category:Safe SCPs Category:Sentient SCPs